Sign making, coordination of perspectives, and conceptual development

The purpose of this study is to investigate how children's symbolic understanding is supported by preschool teachers. Focus is on how children learn to understand symbols on signs, for example by using a cross to indicate that something is prohibited.

The authors find that different interaction patterns can teach the children to understand sign making. Three different scenarios are used to represent the most pronounced interaction patterns in the teaching. In one scenario, the preschool teacher changes the background of the symbol, so that the symbol is constant, but the background of the symbol changes. The preschool teacher draws a cross to signal prohibition, but changes the object that has been crossed over, for example an ice cream or a swing. The preschool teacher and the child talk about the fact that eating ice cream and swinging are prohibited. The different backgrounds of the symbol serve as different contexts for the symbol. In this way, the child learns about the specific meaning of the symbol in different contexts.

In the second scenario, the preschool teacher and the child talk about the fact that a cross generally means that something is prohibited. The child and the preschool teacher draw an apple on a regular piece of paper and a cross on a transparent piece of paper. The preschool teacher then changes between placing the cross on top of the apple and removing the cross from the apple. The child and the preschool teacher talk about how, in one situation (without the cross), eating the apple is allowed, and in the other situation (with the cross), eating the apple is not allowed. The authors conclude that the variation between the presence and absence of the cross teaches the child about the meaning of the cross.

As opposed to the two scenarios above, in the third scenario, the preschool teacher brings the child's own perspective and experience into the teaching. The preschool teacher begins by asking about the child's experience with different symbols, for example caution signs. After the child and the preschool teacher have talked about the child's experience with a specific caution sign, the preschool teacher moves on to talk about the general concept. On a piece of transparent paper, she draws a triangle. She alternates between placing the triangle on top of an object and removing it from the object. She then asks the child what it means. The preschool teacher thus takes the child's own experience as a point of departure to teach the child about the symbol at a more general level.

Twelve children aged 4-6 years old were observed together with two preschool teachers in connection with two teaching sessions on signs and their meaning. In the first session, the teachers and the children talked about symbols on signs and their meaning on the basis the children's own drawings. In the second session, each of the 12 children were taught individually by one of the two teachers to learn about the meaning of a cross and a triangle: The cross typically signals prohibition, whereas the triangle signals caution. The two preschool teachers applied a variation theory stating that you learn about a phenomenon when experiencing that the phenomenon is constant, while something else varies. For example, you learn about the colour red when experiencing the existence of other colours, and that the colour red is constant. In the analysis, the authors focussed on the second session in which the children were taught one-to-one.

Magnusson, M., & Pramling, N. (2016). Sign making, coordination of perspectives, and conceptual development. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal 24(6), 841-856.